The Student Association Senate approved the use of an extended bus route at its Sunday meeting.

With this approval, the Mass Transit board will allocate $9,500 from its budget to run the service to Fox Valley Mall, said Christy Hartnett, SA director of transportation.

The service will begin in spring 2002 and will run only on weekends.

There was some debate, however, on the subject of another bus route to the Geneva train station.

Senators argued that the route should be instated because of a $600,000 surplus in the Mass Transit budget. But there were senators that felt that the bus routes are more incentives for students to leave DeKalb.

“We are known as a suitcase school and the bus routes will just encourage that,” senator Brad Kuhn said.

The SA also filled the remaining seven seats of the senate.

After just over a month, the senate approved the applications from seven people and confirmed them as new senators.

Senate speaker Kevin Miller was named a senator because as speaker he does not have a vote and it will alleviate any confusion on rules of order, he said.

Also named to the senate were Andrew Nelms, Tia Speat, Shanda Scharff, DuJuan Smith, Kuhn and Erik Benbennick, senators emeritus.

“I really love this school,” Schraff said. “I feel if there were more organizations, more students would stay around on the weekends and they would be more involved.”

The senate also approved the creation of an ad-hoc committee for pre-professional organizations.

Sen. Kevin O’Kelly proposed the temporary committee that will stamp-out the details of the organizations. This comes after there was some confusion on whether the organizations should receive funding from the SA.

“Funding them could mean that we are funding their careers, but there are meetings and forums that they put on that the students could benefit from,” O’Kelly said.

Named to the ad-hoc committee were senators R.J. Gravel, Kuhn, Speat, Quinesha Colbert and Benbennick.

The senate also recognized three new student organizations, Mustard Seed, Next in Line and Impact Christian Fellowship, all of which have not requested SA funding.

The next senate meeting will be at 6 p.m. Nov. 4 in the Holmes Student Center’s Clara Sperling Skyroom.